LIFE Magazine’s 1967 Anti-Second Amendment Editorial

I bought my first pistol in 1967: a Colt Woodsman sport and target model. I purchased it over the counter, across state lines, for cash. My father drove me to the gun store; I was 16 years old and didn’t have a driver’s license. It cost $60 including a holster. The Colt’s served me well over the decades and half way around the world. I mention this bit of history to keep it from being flushed down the memory hole by the civilian disarmament industrial complex. They would have Americans believe that guns are “easier to buy than a book.” The exact opposite is true . . .

In 1965, you could buy guns, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, through the mail. Pistols required a federal license to mail order. The license cost a dollar. And gun rights were fighting for their lives.

In 1968, “inspired” by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin other King Jr., fueled by political unrest and the bloody conflict over civil rights, the media cartel mounted a full-court press to convince the public that it was time to enact “serious” gun control. Not just in the South, where racist gun control was born. But nationwide.

If it was even discussed, the Second Amendment was mentioned it was painted as a”collective right.” The press insisted that imposing radical restrictions on gun sales was not only reasonable, it was required to stop crime.

This was pre-internet, when three major TV networks and a handful of newspapers dominated the nation’s political discourse. When a mimeograph machine and direct mail were considered “guerrilla media.” There was no effective way to rally public opposition to gun control.

Lyndon Johnson was able to bully Congress into passing the Gun Control act of 1968. Crime rates immediately shot up, and didn’t return to 1967 levels until the last few years.

I want to preserve the 1967 Life magazine editorial for all to see, because we’re hearing the same tired old arguments today. If you read the editorial carefully, you will note that they never explain why “anti-tank guns” should be banned. They never list a single crime committed with such guns. If they had an example, they would certainly have used it. They simply state their opinion as if it were fact.

Thankfully, we now have the Internet. The NRA, GOA, SAF and hundreds of pro-rights groups can rally their supporters in minutes rather than months. Websites such as TTAG and social media can counter the propaganda produced by the vestiges of the once all-powerful “mainstream media.” The Orwellian named “fairness doctrine” no longer hobbles free speech on the radio channels.

A great political awakening has occurred in the last 25 years. We now have the Heller and McDonald decisions, re-affirming the right to keep and bear arms as an individual rights. And the current crop of presidential candidates are talking about defending our rights, and the Constitution. It’s about time.

Probably better questions to today’s progressive: Who needs a 2005 Chateau Latour? Who needs to fly to Tahiti? Who needs marijuana? Who needs a blow job? Various Communist governments have asked those questions and come up with the same answer.

The need was not to sit in front row of the bus. It was the subjugation of a citizen and culture requirement because of the color of ones skin, to move to the back of the bus if a white person wanted your seat.

Now the rights of law abiding citizens are infringed requiring gun owners to move their arms into locked vaults while denying lawful self protection in public.

Black Panther Party demonstration outside Huey P Newton’s trial was also in 1967. 1967 was indeed the blast-off point for another wave of gun-control, with the traditional racist trappings in tact, it would seem.

Indeed. Now there is a push ad on my local TV news web page “Sign on with Hillary to Prevent Gun Violence” or some such similar idiocy. You can’t find out what she would do to “prevent gun violence” unless you give your email, and I really don’t want to have her ads flood my in-box.

It proves also that the anti-2A people never stop. 1967 was before the GCA of 1968 and the FFL system. Articles like this in LIFE helped get GCA ’68 in force. In other words, the gun controllers got what they wanted for the most part…GCA ’68 in it’s original form would have established a national gun registration and licensing scheme in addition to the FFL system.

There’s never going to be a point short of total disarmament that will keep the anti-2A brigades happy.

Basically parents who are anti-gun won’t buy the old fashioned Army Men for their boys, so they get this instead. A “non-violent” toy. Yes, because as soon as you put a little green plastic rifle in their little green plastic hands, after just a few minutes of seemingly innocent play, you’re kids will turn into serial killers. With all the ‘plastic’ battles I staged as a kid, I could easily invade another country now. Obviously.

Why none other than the legacy media itself, from the news to the violence mongers in Hollywood and network programming. These liberal fantasy producing bogots’ hands are filthy with the propagation of overwhelming amounts of violence, and PARTICULARLY gun violence, in the day to day content viewed by young and old alike.

And then these self riteous legacy media ass holes point their fingers at non-violent law abiding gun owners, who abhor the kind of violence portrayed on the tube and screen, and say violent shootings are our fault because gun owners own guns for sport, self protection, and hunting.

I don’t disagree with some of your assertions, but in the case of little boys, I think it’s less a media creation and more the fact that little boys are, at best, barely-civilized animals who should probably be raised in barns. All the attempts to emasculate them by parents and schools are doomed to failure and unintended consequences, because little boys are hard-wired for mayhem.

Well you don’t NEED an anti-tank gun until you do. Then if you don’t HAVE an anti-tank gun you’re going to get run over by a tank and squished into jelly. So I’d say considering the high cost of not having an anti-tank gun when you need it, it’s better to just be prepared.

Anti tank and anti low flying (helicopter) weapons were shown to be absolute must haves after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. And even in this country, their wide spread presence would quite possibly have made such petty pr stunts as incinerating the Branch Davidians too risky to bother with.

If it was even discussed, the Second Amendment was mentioned it was painted as a”collective right.”
Ah yes, the National Guard Gun Control argument. That monster is still alive and well in some quarters.
Of course by the same reasoning, we must conclude that all of the Bill of Rights have a collective basis rooted in the government being able to do anything it darn well pleases.

Hey Tom WE had the Desert Fox play set-and Fort Apache too. And lots of war toys…younguns’ don’t know about that purple mimeograph ink-my 1st experience getting high. It must have been wonderful ordering through the mail(Lee Harvey Oswald not withstanding).

I ‘had’ a plastic Thompson sub machine gun. Looked real as life. Used to have a great time playing ‘army’ in the hills and trees of the neighborhood. This was when “Combat” was first run on T.V. I was of course, Sgt. Saunders.

Do that today and you’d have the cops called on you by some nanny whoos in most Democrat owned suburban places.

That’s a real stinkin shame too. Those were good, fun growing times. Foundation for initiative and decision making skills.

Not sure if you’re serious or not, but absent idiotic bans, I am pretty darned sure competition and ingenuity would have furnished plenty of practical explosive ordnance weaponry, suitable for for example bear defense by now.

Heck, I got drafted in 1967 at 18. They gave me all kinds of things to shoot and even sent me to school in Ft. Bliss to learn how to shoot down airplanes as a Hawk Missile Fire Controller. Never got to fire one as they sent a bunch of us to other training at Ft. Sill before sending us to Vietnam. Missed the whole political environment at that time. Glad someone worked to protect our rights while I was protecting our rights….supposedly.

Opposition to the growing power of the Media – Government complex was disorganized and rather ineffectual at the time. The Cold war stifled opposition on the right; the opposition on the left tended to be toward greater power foe the media cartel. Pushing for free speech was hailed when the “progressives” controlled 95% or more of effective public speech.

Walter Cronkite, known as the most “trusted man in America”, was a closet hard leftist for decades. He only came out of the closet a couple of years before he died, to brag about it, as I recall.

People tried to paint him as CIA, but if he was, it was a CIA dedicated to the defeat of the U.S., and that seems unlikely.